I think it's a general refusal to recognise that while The Ring is a deepand profoundly insightful drama, a musical milestone and a toweringmasterpiece, it's also a great and glorious sword-and-sorcery adventurestory full of colour and magic and action and excitement. For me, those arethe qualities that are almost completely lacking in productions these days.

I think it's a general refusal to recognise that while The Ring is a deep andprofoundly insightful drama, a musical milestone and a towering masterpiece,it's also a great and glorious sword-and-sorcery adventure story full ofcolour and magic and action and excitement. For me, those are the qualitiesthat are almost completely lacking in productions these days.

I think that I do agree with you, Bert.If you go to a theatre to watch a play, a musical or an opera, you wantto be there to watch the story you expect to see, with all elementsthese stories include. And yes, Bert, when watching The Ring, I wouldlike to see dwarfs, giants, a dragon, the rainbow bridge to Walhall andthe Firewall. I would like to sit in my chair and be amazed by thetricks a theatre has to offer, and by God, modern theatre has so muchto offer these days!Wagner had a story to tell, his story of the Nibelungs and basically Ido not mind if a director of today gives his own interpretation of thatstory, as long as he is telling the story of the Nibelungs and Wotanand Siegfried. If he is putting the story in some sort of 'socialistic'framework (Patrice Chéreau), that is fine by me as long as he istelling about the rise and fall of the gods as Wagner wrote it down inwords and music, and it becomes even more attractive if he uses themachinery modern theatres have to offer.What I do not like is the tendency of our present directors to use thewords and the music of a composer, in our case Wagner, but he is notthe only one who is abused, to tell a completely different story. A fewyears ago I saw on German television a Bayreuth production of Parsifal.I don't need to tell here the story of Parsifal and how Wagner put thatinto words and music. What I saw was in no way the story of Parsifal,but a 'lecture' on German history, from around 1870 till 2000. Mindyou, it was wonderful to watch - it is incredible what they canestablish nowadays on stage, but it had nothing to do with Parsifal. Istill do not understand what Gurnemanz was doing in the front garden of1870 Wahnfried and why the opera ended in Mrs Merkel's Bundestag...Chéreau also gave us a (socialist) view of that period of Germany'shistory in his Ring (the gods as bourgeois German civilians in DasRheingold and factory workers seeing the twilight of the gods inGötterdämmerung), but he still told the story of Wagner with Alberichchanging into a toad, with Giants, a dragon (yes, on wheels towed bystage hands) and a ring of fire.Stay close to the story, know your boundaries and exploit what you cando within those boundaries and use all the tricks a theatre can offerand if you do so, you will make me a happy theatre going man!

Actually, Mike, I rather like some of that. But I wasn't asking for thehigh-camp kitschery of the Eurovision song contest but for its high-techimaginative approach to lighting and colour and projection, its flexibilityof staging and its happy and fearless embracing of the big dramatic moment.

Post by Bert CoulesActually, Mike, I rather like some of that. But I wasn't asking for thehigh-camp kitschery of the Eurovision song contest but for its high-techimaginative approach to lighting and colour and projection, its flexibilityof staging and its happy and fearless embracing of the big dramatic moment.

With you there, but in addition to artistic skills and vision, always at a premium, that demands MONEY, and opera budgets are becoming increasingly tight across Europe in particular, especially as it becomes clear just how extravagant they've been over the last two or three decades. The Maryinsky seems to have escaped so far, partly from political connections, but few other companies. The Far East seems to be the place now for no-expense-spared stagings. There's the very promising Hong Kong Phil Ring recording, I've just seen a rather impressive Chinese Turandot, and there's a very interesting Ring brewing in Japan -- more when I can find out more.